


easily will unclose me

by eversall



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Like, M/M, cw: depression, just a lot of introspection, or at least references to it, really more of a jace character study, too much introspection. too much by far
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 11:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18893509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eversall/pseuds/eversall
Summary: But the thing about people you don’t look at, Jace realizes, is that when you finally look at them it’s like being sucker punched in the gut with how much you’re missing. He remembers it, clear as day, Simon with blood smeared across his neck and soaking his shirt through, looking every bit like the monster he’d never wanted to be, peering at Jace with those dark, dark eyes, and saying with a quiet gentlenessI could have killed you.At twenty-four, Jace is pretty sure he doesn’t know how to look at anyone else in the room when Simon’s in it. There’s a word for the way warmth burns through his skin at the thought of Simon, but he’s not saying it. Not yet..Jace is twenty when he dies and comes back to life, and twenty when he encounters the brilliance of Simon Lewis. He never really gets over either of those things.





	easily will unclose me

**Author's Note:**

> me: oh wow shadowhunters is over  
> me: oh WOW SHADOWHUNTERS IS OVER MY UNFINISHED FICS ARE NO LONGER RELEVANT S H I T
> 
> anyway i started writing this like a year? and a half? ago right after 3a ended and just kept adding to it in little bits and pieces. it definitely ignores all of 3b. it's a bit chronologically disjointed, but i'm too attached to what it means to me written the way it was to change it. i just think jace as a character has a lot of interesting depth with the whole dying thing. 
> 
> title taken from somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by e.e. cummings. 
> 
> you can find me on my [ tumblr ](http://eversall.tumblr.com/)

Simon asks him once, half-seriously, if Jace thinks Shadowhunters are allowed to get nice things when they’re older. He _means_ silly things like tickets to amusement parks and concerts, but Jace is half-asleep and his mind immediately flashes to the things he wants. Things that are soft, and comfortable, like waking up to a late morning sun.

The reality is that Jace is pretty damn sure nice things aren’t in his future.

“Nice things are for people who’ve lost less than I have,” he means to say, but somewhere between the second where he opens his mouth and the second he sees Simon’s lips quirk up in that half-smile he ends up saying “Nice things are for losers like you.”

Simon’s answering grin is insouciant and insufferable. “I’m sure you meant that to be threatening,” he says, “but it like – wasn’t?” He holds up his hands as he laughs, like he can’t be held responsible for Jace’s own inability to construct any retort even remotely insulting these days.  

Jace sighs and goes back to cleaning his blade. He’s sat on the floor of Simon’s apartment by the bed, and Simon’s spread-eagled across his duvet, watching Jace monotonously wipe the cloth down the side like it’s the most riveting thing to happen to him.

“You missed a spot,” Simon says cheerfully, and then he shrieks when Jace replies “Is it _here_ ” and reaches over to dig his fingers into Simon’s sides, where he knows Simon is extra ticklish. Simon’s resounding laughter interspersed with his spluttering declaration of “You’re a _dick_ ” as he pelts Jace with discarded sheet music has Jace uncomfortably pushing down the thought that maybe this is what a nice thing feels like.

.

Four years ago, when everyone was at war and their long-term goals mostly involved _don’t die for another week_ , Jace was too tired to think about Simon at all, and he didn’t really think the guy would ever stick around. The world is a pretty small place for a Shadowhunter, and honestly – when he was twenty, Simon was the kind of person that Jace never actually looked twice at.

But the thing about people you don’t look at, Jace realizes, is that when you finally look at them it’s like being sucker punched in the gut with how much you’re missing. He remembers it, clear as day, Simon with blood smeared across his neck and soaking his shirt through, looking every bit like the monster he’d never wanted to be, peering at Jace with those dark, dark eyes, and saying with a quiet gentleness _I could have killed you_.

At twenty-four, Jace is pretty sure he doesn’t know how to look at anyone else in the room when Simon’s in it. There’s a word for the way warmth burns through his skin at the thought of Simon, but he’s not saying it. Not yet.

.

“Hey Jace,” Simon wheedles, and when Jace ignores him in favor of drinking his tea and staring at that day’s Jumble puzzle in the paper, Simon calls out, louder, “Hey, _grandpa_ , put down the paper and look at me.”

“Needy,” Jace chides, but he looks up. He spends more days than he cares to admit in Simon’s apartment, because it’s warm and cozy and lived in. Besides, who even lives at the Institute anymore? There’s an unspoken rule between all of them that the Institute is more of a hotel these days than anything; Clary lives with Maia, Izzy with her doctor _friend_ she insists isn’t anything serious despite going steady for three years, and Alec with Magnus.

Also, living with Simon without actually _talking_ about it has the benefit of sleepy, early-morning Simon whining at him like an endearing puppy without Jace having to explain to Simon _why_ he likes waking up to that so much. It’s a win-win all around.

“I think we should go on a road trip,” Simon announces with a flourish. Jace raises an eyebrow and waits a few seconds.

“Is…there some monster we’re chasing?” he asks when Simon looks at him expectantly without offering more information.

Simon looks _offended_ by the suggestion that they’re monster hunting, which, considering that they work for the Institute seems like an unwarranted emotion. He is, to everyone’s eternal amusement and to Alec’s resigned exasperation, very adamant that his real job title is ‘struggling musician’. This, despite the fact that he passed struggling years ago when he started songwriting _and_ the fact that he spends his weekends out with them staking demons left and right as he ostensibly just ‘watches’.

“There is no _monster_ ,” Simon stresses, “I just think we could have some fun!”

“That’s very optimistic,” Jace says, blowing on his tea. Simon shrugs, stealing the Jumble puzzle and filling one of the words out.

“Come on, it’ll be good for you,” Simon says, looking down at the puzzle, but his words are a little quiet and a little off, and Jace looks at him carefully.

“Okay,” he says, and some kind of tension leaves Simon’s shoulders.

He’s really fucking weak for those shoulders, he thinks, and refuses to think deeper than that about what he’s actually weak for.

.

Somewhere between when Clary broke up with him for maybe the fifth time in the two years they’d known each other and when Alec announced that he and Magnus were engaged, Jace had learned that he was _lonely_.

He’d learned it over the next few weeks, as Clary tearfully came out to him as lesbian, which had been something Jace hadn’t really seen coming but suddenly made him feel like he’d wasted all this time with her that she could have been out searching for someone to make her happy. Clary had reassured him that it hadn’t been wasted time, that they’d always love each other even if they’d never been in love, and Jace believed her – but the whole thing had revealed something entirely more terrifying than anything he’d previously thought of, which was that there was no one waiting for him at the end of the line. 

There was no one waiting for him at the end of the line, and it was only upsetting because he’d learned long ago not to expect anyone, and then Clary and Simon had barged in and turned their lives around to the point that some part of Jace – the soft, exposed, underbelly of the beast pacing restlessly inside him – needed someone standing there after all. Without meaning to, he’d turned himself into more of a man than a monster, and it had felt _good_ up until the point he’d realized that it also meant he felt lonely.

Maia and Clary had paired off, in a move that had surprised everyone, and Izzy had just been getting into the swing of things with her doctor, and Jace had vowed never to disturb Magnus and Alec again, and anyway – there had been something despondent in him that he’d never known how to quiet down, and he knew that anyone who got close to him would have suddenly been touching something abyssal in him that was sharper than anyone could really see.

He’d spent a miserable week with the knowledge that maybe this was as far as he could get in becoming a real boy. Pinocchio fucking wept, he thinks.

But then, like a star descending from the sky - Simon had found _him_ first, prodding and poking at Jace until Jace begrudgingly went with the other man to an arcade, and then to a food truck festival, and then to his gigs, and then to one thing after another until he realized Simon had tricked him into becoming the kind of intensely co-dependent friends that had movie marathons every week.

Jace had asked him about it once, and never again after that. They’d been sprawled across Simon’s couch, lazily debating if they could play videogames through the night or not, and Jace had said, apropos of nothing, _were you feeling sorry for me because Clary dumped me when you asked to hang out?_

Simon had squinted at him. _That was months ago, you idiot_ , and then, that piercing look again, _I learned a long time ago not to do things for people because I feel sorry for them_.

Jace hadn’t really known what to say to that, and it hadn’t been the first time that his heart had done that funny little leap in his chest, but it had been the first time he’d noticed that it was tied to _Simon_.

.

They’re three hours on the road when Jace glances at his watch – courtesy of Izzy as a twenty-fourth birthday present, where she’d sternly told him that black and leather weren’t acceptable fashion choices for a man nearing his mid-twenties and he’d better start shaping up – and looks at the tiny square that tells the date. His eyes widen.

“Fuck,” he says, and Simon glances over at him in alarm.  
“What, what is it?” he yelps, because they’ve been riding in silence for the last half-hour, ever since Jace felt his eyes begin to slip shut as his body protested at being awake at four in the morning for Simon’s road trip to Canada. (“It’s called Simon’s Road Trip of _Fun_ ,” he hears Simon’s voice scold him in his head.)

“Uh,” Jace says, and then he flounders because how do you say _I just realized why you wanted to go on a road trip_ without saying _it’s because it’s the anniversary of your death_? He’s not sure what Canada has to do with the edge that sits just under Simon’s skin, the part of him that’s immortal and thirsty and alone no matter what any of them try to do about it.

“Seriously, Jace, you’re freaking me out,” Simon says, and Jace swallows.  
“Just – “ he says, and then stops, and tries again. “I’m glad you took me with you on this road trip. Even if I’m pretty sure we’re going to find a monster, because when do we _not_?”

“Shh, don’t jinx it, they can hear fear,” Simon says blithely, which doesn’t sound right at all. “We’re not finding monsters.”

“Simon,” Jace says, and nudges Simon’s hand where it’s resting on the gear shift. “I mean it.”

The dazzling smile that breaks free on Simon’s face is literally like looking into the sun, and Jace’s heart _hurts_ , but it’s – good. It’s the hurt after a successful mission, after a day spent on his feet training new recruits and coming back to Simon’s passable cooking, the kind that says _look, you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re human and fragile and breakable and so very alive._

.

“Not that sitting here and silently sipping coffee hasn’t been wonderful,” Alec says blandly, “because it has, really, but I have to go. I have a class of young, impressionable Shadowhunters to teach.”

“I – _ugh_.” Jace massages his temples because he knows this is stupid, really, he _knows it_ but using his words is always a lot harder than Clary ever made it out to be.

“Okay, at least – what is this about? I can _feel_ your tension across the bond,” Alex remarks, and honestly, bless his brother for being so patient for so long. They really have sat here for ten minutes, saying nothing, and Alec’s waited the whole time sipping on his black coffee and pretending like he isn’t dying to make fun of Jace just a little for whatever’s going on with him right now that’s got him clutching a whipped cream vanilla monstrosity in his hands that passes vaguely for coffee.

“It’s about – do you ever feel something and think, shit, I didn’t think this would happen to me, but it _did_ , and now you’re not sure that you…should?” Jace blurts out, and it’s the most inelegant he’s ever been, even counting the first time he had sex.

Alec blinks once, twice, and then looks exasperatedly at Jace. “I’m not a mind-reader.”

“Right.” Jace sips his coffee. “Just…I don’t know how to…be okay with…my emotions on this matter – “  
“And you thought because I’m gay, I do?”

“ _Alec_ ,” he says, and it’s his alarm at that _tone_ in Alec’s voice that he blurts out, “it’s because you and Magnus love each other so _easily_ – “ and then he realizes what he’s just revealed and he clamps his mouth shut and prays that a demon attacks him _right now_.

Alec looks bored. “By the fucking Angel,” he says, and Jace raises an eyebrow at the curse, “really? Clary, still?”

“Ah.” Jace is a better actor than most people give him credit for, he thinks, if Alec imagines he can be in love with Clary two years after they’ve broken up and Clary’s happily committed to a lifetime of cheerfully overriding Maia’s cynicism. “No.”

“I don’t really see you hanging out with any other girls, so…it’s not _Maia_ , is it?” Alec asks, a queasy look on his face.

Jace is outwardly patient, but inwardly there’s some kind of voice in his head screaming about this being a def-con one situation. The voice sounds a lot like one of Simon’s action movies. “No,” he says, “not Maia.”

Alec sits back and looks at him. “I’m totally lost.”

“Uh,” Jace twists his hands around and around the sleeve of the coffee cup. “Um. The – the one other person I’m spending a lot of time with.”

There’s an extended, miserable silence before Alec slowly sits up and says, “I don’t want to offend your really strong heterosexuality, but it sure as hell sounds like you’re talking about Simon.”

Jace looks back at Alec for just a moment too long without saying anything, and Alec’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “ _Really_?” he asks, and Jace can feel the little pulse of hurt that comes through the bond that Jace has kept something like this a secret for so long – _could have had someone that understands_ is the longing that comes through, loud and clear – before Alec pushes that all aside with an overwhelming amount of love and worry.

Jace laughs shakily. “I don’t think – I don’t know if it’s a sexuality thing. I think it’s just – a Simon thing. He’s just – he makes me want to – he’s the only one,” Jace admits quietly, and it’s saying it without saying it and it’s as far as he’s ever gotten.

Alec sits back. “Damn,” he says, and then again with feeling, “ _Damn_.”

Jace fidgets. “Please don’t tell anyone,” he says lowly, “I can’t take it. I really don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Of course.” Alec sighs and taps his fingers along the table, his shoulder slumping. “You’re really into him? He’s great and all, but I’m just surprised that it’s – well – “ Alec trails off, and then he looks thoughtful. The corner of his mouth twitches upward.

“What?”

There’s a quiet, strained laugh. “This isn’t going to make it sound any better, but now that I’m thinking about it, you know what? It makes sense. I get it.”

“You _do_?” He doesn’t get how his brother can understand when he barely gets it himself.

“It’s just that I think, out of all of us, Simon might understand you the most. About, uh, dying, being someone else that’s not entirely you, your body not – being your own. I think he gets you.”

When Alec says it like that, it sounds so simple. The hurt thing in Jace’s chest wails desperately in recognition, wants to go and bury itself in Simon’s arms so that Simon can protect him from everything that’s sharp in the world.

Jace laughs humorlessly and finishes the rest of his sugared-up nightmare of a drink in one swig. “I wish they taught us more about how to deal with this emotional stuff when we were younger,” he bites out. “I wish we learned that along with the way we learned how to fight.”

Alec laughs softly. “You’re so hard on yourself,” he says in the kindest tone Jace has heard on him in a while, “and I just need you to know – it’s not easy for the Mundanes just because they’re _mundane_. And it wasn’t easy for Magnus and I either. It never was, and it still isn’t, because these kinds of things take _work_. I know you think you’re in new and uncharted territory, but you’re really not. This is normal, Jace. You’re okay.”

Jace swallows, and he can’t say anything to that that doesn’t involve bursting into tears in the ugliest way imaginable. He thinks Alec gets it, though, because the little smile at the corner of his brother’s mouth has grown into a full-blown grin as Alec sits back and regards Jace for a few seconds.

“He’s a good man,” Alec says suddenly. “Simon, I mean.”

“He is.” Jace says, and he means it with every fiber of his being. “He really is.”

Almost absently, as Alec rises to toss away his empty coffee cup, he says, “So are you.”

.

Does everyone deserve nice things?

He’s killed more Downworlders than he ever should have. He’s let his own selfishness get in the way of missions. He’s jeopardized the situation more than once because he’s not good at letting go of his innate need to throw himself in danger the first chance he gets, both for the thrill and for the simple understanding that his life is the easiest to spare.

Does the boy with angel blood who seems to have wasted it all on being a murderer deserve nice things? Or, Jace thinks darkly as he drives his fist over and over into the punching bag, he’s gotten all the nice things he’d ever deserved with that angel blood, and now he doesn’t get anything else. That, he thinks, seems _far_ more likely.

.

Simon drops down into the seat next to Jace with a loud, indignant noise. Jace studiously ignores him and continues to take notes on his tablet for some research project the London Institute is doing into angel blood.

Simon makes the noise again, and Jace amuses himself by pointedly pretending he doesn’t hear. “ _Excuse me_ ,” Simon whispers to him, and then, louder, “Jace!” He accompanies the last call with a strong punch to Jace’s shoulder, and that spurs Jace into action. He sits up, hissing dramatically with pain.

“What do you _want_?”

Simon beams. “You know the favor you totally owe me for when I saved your ass from that ghost last weekend?”

Jace feels his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Those weren’t _ghosts_ – “

“Semantics, really – “

“And I don’t remember _ever_ agreeing to a favor for that, that is literally your _job_ when you come on these missions.”

Simon remains unphased. “Favor. For me. Being cashed in now.” Jace stares critically at him, and then sighs, because he knew from the start how this was going to go.

“What do you need?” Jace asks, and then an hour later almost regrets it as he and Simon are hand-stamping the hundred invitations for Rebecca’s wedding. Jace wants to die, and he wants to take whoever invented the hipster aesthetic down with him, because these stamps are going to send him to an early grave with the amount of tedious concentration each address requires.

“Isn’t this fun?” Simon asks, his eyes glimmering with amusement as he grins at Jace.

“I’m pretty sure my fingers are going to permanently cramp in this position,” Jace scowls, waving a stamp at Simon. “I’m going to be fired from being a Shadowhunter and I’m going to be poor and have no money.”

Simon flicks one of the filmy pieces of tissue paper that came in the invitations box at him. “And that’ll be _so_ different from now, where you don’t spend any of your money and you live for free in my apartment _how_?”

“Rent control is a boon that should be shared with others,” Jace replies sagely, and Simon huffs out an exasperated noise.

“Well, while you still have a job, make sure to buy a nice suit for Rebecca’s wedding. I get that Shadowhunters wear gold but if you show up in that hideous black and gold number I swear – “

“It’s not hideous!” Jace protests, and then, “I’m going to Rebecca’s wedding?”

Simon fixes him with a look that screams disappointment. “First of all, I can’t believe you’d think I’d make you help with wedding planning to a wedding you’re not invited to. Second of all, I invited you! Right here on this couch the second Rebecca set a date! I _said_ , save the date because Simon Lewis is going to bring the house down on the dance floor, and _you_ said – “

“ – that you might bring it down because your uncoordinated stomping would cause a mini-earthquake, yeah – “

“ – and then _I_ said well you better come with me to get visual confirmation of my skills and you said okay!”

Jace stares at him, flabbergasted. Simon’s chin is jutting out and it’s dangerously close to _pouting_ , and Simon is a grown man, it shouldn’t look half as endearing as it does. There are dark shadows underneath Simon’s eyes, and a half-visible letter _K_ in smudged ink under the sweep of his cheekbone from where he accidentally leaned against his hand while he was still holding a stamp. Absolutely nothing about it is extraordinary, but Simon is sitting there and folding Jace so neatly into his life like it’s just that easy, and – Jace is fucking gone. He’s done for.

He knows what this is, this big unnamed thing, but he can name it now, he thinks. He’s in love with Simon, every tiny bit of brilliance that makes up this man. _Do you know it?_ he thinks as he laughingly reassures Simon that of course he’ll be attending Rebecca’s wedding, if only to save everyone from Simon’s two left feet. _Do you know the fucking amazing things you’re capable of? I want to rest at your feet for as long as I have left on this world. I want to rest at your feet, and I have never wanted to rest before in my life_.

.

At his twenty-third birthday party, Clary corners him on the balcony with a determined look on her face and a nearly empty glass of sangria clutched in her hand. Jace smiles bemusedly down at her and wonders if he’s supposed to be cutting her off.

“Can I say something to you?” she whispers, tottering on her heels. Jace steadies her with a hand on her elbow.

“Sure,” he says, and he has to grin when she glares down at her feet and kicks off her shoes.

“Better,” she decides, and then, “I want to tell you that happiness is a good thing.”

Jace blinks. The knot in his chest tightens. “Okay?” he tries.

“For _you_ ,” Clary says snapping a finger in his face. “I just need you to know – that – “

She hiccups, and then looks very surprised by the sound coming out of her throat. “God, I’m drunk,” she mutters. “Where’s my girlfriend?”

“Making her way to you,” Jace notes, seeing Maia pick her way through the living room.

“Oh good!” Clary smiles, and it’s utterly besotted, and Jace feels – content.

Maybe this is it, he thinks, this is his peak. His friends and siblings are all warm, safe, and loved, and they’re all gathered there to celebrate _him_ , tipsy on wine in Magnus’ apartment and making nuisances of themselves. Simon is determinedly writing a poem for Jace about his poor driving skills, five shots of plasma in and face flushed, and when he catches Jace looking through the glass door at him he waves enthusiastically.

If this is the peak, he thinks, he’s okay with it. A second skin of loneliness is okay if this is the tradeoff, because it’s enough warmth for the rest of his life.

“Look,” Clary says, interrupting his internal revelation, “I just – while I can still blame it on being drunk – I hate you and Simon doing this to each other because you’re both messed up about what being happy is.”

“That’s – “ Jace takes it _all_ back, he thinks sourly, he isn’t content when his ex-girlfriend is _still_ on his case about something he’s not even sure he’s admitted to himself –

“You could have everything,” Clary says, fixing him with a surprisingly piercing gaze. “Why are you refusing to take it? What’s the fucking point?”

.

Simon’s sulking his way into the kitchen when Jace catches him at it, blinking his eyes against the light as he tears his gaze from the screen of his tablet. The runes he’s been deciphering for the last two hours swim in his vision before everything clears and he sees Simon lethargically reaching for a box of cookies that Clary dropped off last week. His skin is pallid, courtesy of the vampire-flu he’s currently struggling through, and he’s got the look about him of someone who knows they shouldn’t be doing what they’re currently doing, but is going to do it anyway because they’re feeling miserable.

“Hey,” Jace says flatly, and Simon startles and snatches his hand back. He looks back at Jace petulantly, but Jace doesn’t budge. “No.”

Simon sniffles, and Jace’s heart clenches before he reminds himself of the way Oliver, one of Simon’s vampire friends, had looked like in the coma he’d been in for a week when he hadn’t taken care of the vampire-flu properly. He steels himself.

“You can’t eat mundane food until this works its way out of your system.”

“Everything _hurts_ ,” Simon wails helplessly, clutching his arms around himself, “and I just wanna feel _normal_.”

Jace pinches the bridge of his nose. “You will end up comatose or something worse,” he says, trying not to cave to the absolute misery written in every line of Simon’s tense body. “You have to take care of this flu.” Simon looks like he’s about to open his mouth and say something in that heartbreakingly dejected voice again, so Jace adds a desperate “ _Please_ , Simon”.

It works, miraculously. Simon makes an unhappy noise and trudges slowly back into his bedroom; Jace sighs and looks back down at his tablet, but the runes look like absolute gibberish to him now. He holds out for ten minutes before he caves and pads silently into Simon’s room. Though the curtains are open – a staple wherever Simon goes, as he tries to cherish the light he thought he’d never see again – night is creeping up on New York and the room is a mass of shadows.

The bundle on the bed that is presumably Simon is preternaturally still but stirs as Jace hesitantly steps closer. Jace blinks and then tries to focus his eyes, straining to see if Simon’s awake or not. There’s the sound of more rustling, and then Simon’s hand reaches out to flip the switch on a small lamp. Weak light floods the room, Simon’s eyes peering wearily at Jace.

“Hey,” Jace says softly, “just checking in.”

Simon flops backwards again, rubbing his eyes. It’s the first time either of them have been sick in each other’s company, and in a strange way it feels like neither of them know what do.

“I don’t like being sick like this,” he mumbles, his voice so quiet that Jace, even with his own supernatural hearing, has to strain to hear it. “I don’t feel like a real person when I can’t do the things I’d usually do if I was sick as a human. I’m just some weird, fucked up creature of the night.”

“What,” Jace asks, clearing his throat and awkwardly hovering by Simon’s bed, “would you usually do?”

Simon still isn’t looking at him as he answers, his voice distant like he’s miles away in some memory of happier times. It makes Jace’s insides twist up with something awful, makes him want to reach out and yank Simon back to the present in all its shitty, shitty glory. “My mom made soup, and if Becky had time and I was looking pathetic enough she’d come sit beside me and just talk about something stupid until I fell asleep. It was the only time she didn’t even pretend to make fun of me or anything. Oh, and tea, I never liked tea but if I was sick, I’d go through every single flavor I could get my hands on – what are you _doing_?”

The last bit is aimed at the way Jace is kicking aside the piles of dirty clothes Simon has scattered on the floor so he can make his way to the other side of Simon’s bed and climb in. He can feel his cheeks begin to flush with embarrassment; he doesn’t _really_ know what he’s doing but he knows that he’d do a hell of a lot more to get Simon to stop looking like he’s forgetting how to be himself.

“Okay,” Jace says roughly, “okay. Magnus says it’s going to take one more day for this work itself out of your system, so – okay. You want stories?”

Simon doesn’t say anything, and Jace risks a glance down at him to see Simon’s mouth agape, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“I’m not Becky,” Jace says uncertainly, “but, you know. You’re still a real person.”

There’s another silence, prolonged and uncomfortable, but Jace soldiers on through it. He’s not twenty anymore, and he’s not going to let the most human person he knows feels like this without trying in his own clumsy way to fix it.

After all, he’s never really encountered anything he wasn’t good at, and this taking care of Simon thing – it’s a hell of a lot kinder than his other skills.

He _feels_ more than he sees the instant that the tension drains out of Simon, a soft exhale as Simon shifts more onto his side and tucks his hands under his head.

“Okay,” Simon says, his voice thick. “Tell me a story.”

.

Three years into their friendship he finds Simon nearly drained of blood in the alleyway behind a blood bank, the latest victim of a sadistic killer that’s targeting vampires. The world freezes around him for one crystalline second, long enough for a thought to manifest itself – _death can’t have him_.

It’s a selfish thought, because death already won’t come for Simon Lewis, and Jace knows that some days Simon wants it to, but it settles firmly into his bones as he sprints down the alley and throws himself down by Simon with a ragged exhale; he’s not strong enough to watch Simon die before he does. When he closes his eyes for the last time, it needs to be with the knowledge that Simon is still there.

There’s so much _blood_ , he thinks robotically, why is there so _much_ pooled around the boy? In his arms, Simon is pliant and limp, his eyes glassy. _Almost gone_ , the clinical part of Jace intones, while the angel blood in him screams about the unfairness of the whole thing, and he thinks of Simon’s bright, bright smiles and easy jokes and his quiet anxiousness and –

“Drink,” Jace says, his voice cracking, but there’s no one around to hear it; he extends his wrist and slashes it against the fang in Simon’s open mouth and waits the agonizing length of one heartbeat, two heartbeats –

Simon surges up with a snarl, something low and animalistic that cages Jace in. The bite is painful at first, a sharp, hot pinpointed ache that immediately soothes out into a wave of pleasure. Jace grits his teeth and tries his best not to let out the moan working at his throat. Simon’s hands are strong, nearly bruising as they hold Jace down, and he fucking _likes_ it.

He has, however, also been in this situation enough times that he knows when to tap out and kick at Simon’s shin, putting enough angelic force behind it that Simon’s thrown backward, and then he lies in the dirty alleyway for a second, catching his breath as he hears Simon begin to come back to himself on the other end.

“ _Jace_?” Simon’s weak voice sounds, and Jace groans and drags himself upright. Simon’s leaning on his elbows, his eyes clouded with confusion but lucid enough to quell Jace’s lingering worry. There’s blood dribbling down Simon’s chin, thick and nearly black in the dark shadows of the night. “Oh no – “

“Don’t you _dare_ apologize,” Jace says hoarsely.

Simon makes a wounded noise. “But I – “

“Simon Lewis, I swear by the Angel if I have to hear one more pathetic monologue where you essentially ask me to just let you die next time – “

“There’s a blood bank right there!” Simon gestures wildly at the door. “I mean, I get that this guy’s MO is like the Tantalus curse, blah blah blah, extra-dramatic bleeding out of victims right by a food source – but – do _you_ have to be just as dramatic?”

They stare each other down, bloodied and cast hollow by the shadows that are seeping into the midnight air, and Jace can feel the tension, thick in the air. Jace has never understood the recklessness that Simon carries with him, which Clary always says is hypocritical of him, but Jace is a soldier, trained to throw away his life for pretty much anything and everything. Shadowhunters aren’t expendable, but there is a kind of careless tragedy to everything they do, so they’re ready for death.

But Jace is not ready for Simon’s death, and he doesn’t know why Simon doesn’t get that.

“Sorry I didn’t stop to shop for your food instead of giving you raw, artisanal, organic Angel blood, straight from the tap – “ Jace finally says, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, because he doesn’t know what to do about the way Simon is looking at him right now, with a hunger in his eyes that Jace is pretty sure has nothing to do with blood at all. The look fades from Simon’s eyes as he snorts, and Jace counts it as a win.

Maybe Simon doesn’t understand why Jace isn’t ready for Simon’s death, but to be fair – Jace doesn’t know how to say it out loud, either, and that might be just as bad.

.

“Hey,” Simon says one afternoon, sprawled across the couch with his limbs going everywhere. Jace is curled into the corner of the couch that Simon isn’t occupying, reading a book and trying to ignore how Simon occasionally shifts and drags his sock-clad feet along Jace’s thigh like it’s fucking _normal_. The worst part is that it is normal, it’s mundane and on par with the rest of the subconscious touching that the two of them engage in, and Jace is slowly being driven crazy by it.

“Hey yourself,” he mutters back, instead of thinking too hard about the rest of it. He finally glances over his book at Simon, who’s throwing aside his controller and looking at Jace fondly.

“Let’s go out tonight,” Simon says. “Nightclub or something.”

“Hm.” Jace turns back to his book. “Pandemonium having some kind of event?”

Simon laughs, a breathless little sound. “No, I, uh – I thought we could go somewhere mundane.”

“Dancing isn’t really your go-to hangout activity, and you can’t really get drunk at a mundane club.” Jace remarks, dog-earing the page he’s on and carefully placing the book on the little coffee table by the couch that Clary forced them to get to replace the stacking crates they used to have instead. Something about living like normal people, which Jace felt was kind of rich coming from Clary since the coffee table in her and Maia’s apartment were just stacking crates that Clary had gone to town on to repurpose into aesthetically pleasing end tables.

“Yeah, I just felt like tonight was a night to do something different? And I was planning on pre-gaming with some vamp-friendly alcohol,” Simon mumbles, his voice coming out unsure. “If you don’t want to it’s okay – “

“C’mon, Si, you know me and nightclubs go well together. I am, of course, just worried about your ability to fit in,” Jace says grandiosely, stretching his arms out over the back of the couch, and Simon snorts at that, the uncertainty melting off his face. “Sounds good though. When do you want to head out? When are we meeting the girls?”

Simon glances away and looks studiously at the ceiling, swallowing. His throat bobs, and Jace doesn’t think he should be so entranced by the pale, unmarked skin of Simon’s chin and jaw, but he’s past the point of caring about why he can’t stop thinking about these things. He wants to know what it feels like to drag his fingertips over the smooth skin there and if Simon would make a noise if he did that.

“Uh,” Simon says slowly, “the girls aren’t coming. I think they’re busy. I thought, um, I thought that we could just go.”

“Just the two of us?”

“Yeah.” Jace’s heart leaps into his throat at that, something fragile settling into his heart, and he bites back a helplessly soft smile.

“Alright.” He stretches, more languidly now, his shirt riding up past his hips. He feels Simon’s gaze flick to him, and then away. “Prepare to be dazzled by how many free drinks we get thanks to this,” he says, gesturing to his own face. Simon makes an outraged noise and throws one of the decorative pillows – another aesthetic touch that Clary _insisted_ on – at him, and Jace forgets about his half-melancholy state in favor of retaliation, letting out an embarrassingly serious war cry as he dives for the other man.

Later, Simon shoos him into his bedroom with strict instructions to clean up and look nice _without_ the requisite leather jacket. (“This isn’t one of your missions, Jace, show the club the respect it deserves.”) Jace is halfway through pulling on the first T-shirt he can find when something uncertain and tremulously excited hits him; he’s going _dancing_ with _Simon_. _Alone_.

He swallows down his pride and texts Maia, who sends him only laughing emojis for five minutes before she tells him to wear a color that doesn’t come out of a greyscale chart. He groans quietly before he digs in his closet for the bright green shirt he remembers Alec got him once in an attempt to indicate to Jace that maybe he needed to put in a little more effort with his outfits. He never did, but now, he thinks, is as good a time as any to start.

He pulls the shirt on and spends an agonizing five minutes trying to figure out if he should pull the sleeves up a little or not, before he angrily yanks them up to just below his elbow and thinks savagely that if Simon isn’t attracted to him now, he certainly isn’t going to change his mind over Jace’s _forearms_. He slips his stele in his pocket – just in case – and walks out to the living room, yelling at Simons room for him to hurry up as he does. He messes around on his phone for a while, categorically denying to Maia that he’s got anything in the realm of feelings, until the sound of the door swinging open makes him look up.

“Ta-da!” Simon says, and does a dorky little spin in place; Jace’s heart beats erratically in his chest and he spends a second too long just quietly staring at Simon. He doesn’t even know what Simon is wearing yet; all he knows is that Simon is smiling and Jace wants to kiss him so badly he can feel it in his bones. “Jace?”

Jace smiles slowly, shaking his head. “Not bad, Lewis, not bad at all,” he says as he steadily pushes past the feeling of drowning to flick his eyes over Simon’s outfit, at the deep blue button-up and standard dark-wash jeans. Simon’s done something to his hair so that it’s mostly gelled up in a little swoop. He’s devastatingly attractive, and Jace doesn’t think he’s ever going to look at anyone else the way he looks at Simon.

“Not bad yourself,” Simon says, breaking Jace out of his reverie. “I see even _you’ve_ ditched the all-black ensemble.”

“Mm. You need to take a picture and send it to Alec to prove I don’t waste his gifts.”

Simon takes out his phone, rolling his eyes. “I think the fact that I have to _take a picture_ – “ Simon breaks off to gesture wildly at Jace, who roll his eyes.

“I’m not going to _pose_ , Simon.” He crosses his arms.

“That’s pose enough, big boy. Okay, here we go.” Simon takes the picture, and then taps away on his phone. Jace’s phone vibrates slightly as Simon sends the picture to their group chat. “Anyway, I think the fact that you need a picture really proves that you do waste his gifts.”

“Whose side are _you_ on?” Jace demands, and Simon grins and looks so good doing it that Jace’s heart begins doing cartwheels in his chest.

.             

The serial killer – _Tantalus_ \- ends up being holed up in a warehouse by the docks; they’re all called out for the mission, because _of course_ the serial killer has backup. It goes wrong way before they even step foot onto the docks; it goes wrong in the Institute, the instant that Jace hesitantly says to Alec “Maybe Simon should sit this one out.”

Alec glances at him in mild surprise. “Why?”

“Why?” Jace asks back incredulously. Alec frowns, and Jace backtracks. “I mean, it’s just – this guy almost got to Simon once already, maybe it isn’t the best idea to put Simon up against him.”

“He has backup now. We’re all going,” Alec says slowly, looking at Jace like he’s grown an extra head. Jace still has the image of Simon twitching uncontrollably on the ground near the blood bank, and he grimaces.

“Look, I just think it would be safer. It’s one mission, he’ll be back on the next one,” Jace says evenly.

Alec looks distinctly uncomfortable as he lowers his voice even more. “I don’t think that’s the best idea. Simon’s capable, okay?”

“What if he freezes up?” Jace demands. “What if something goes wrong?”

There’s a knock at the door, and they both still and look up to see Simon standing at the entrance to Alec’s office, looking shell-shocked. Jace’s heart drops into his stomach. There’s an expression of hurt on Simon’s face, quickly morphing into cold anger.

“I came by early,” Simon says slowly, “to give an update on Tantalus’ backup that I got from another vampire.” There’s a second of silence, and an ugly feeling begins worming its way into Jace’s heart at the look on Simon’s face, the one he hasn’t seen since the days when they’d first met, and Simon had hated him on sight.

“That’s good,” Alec says, forcefully cheerful, “we can update everyone’s briefs with – “

“You think I’m not capable?” Simon interrupts, not even looking at Alec. His voice is soft and controlled, and that makes it worse, Jace thinks desperately. Out of habit, he falls into a defensive position, feet planted shoulder-width apart and hand on the pommel of his blade.

“No,” Jace says hurriedly, “it’s not like that – how much of it did you hear?”

“From the second you said maybe I should sit this one out.”

“Simon,” Jace’s voice catches, “ _please_.” He doesn’t know what he’s pleading for. Alec is still in the room, he knows, glancing between the two of them apprehensively, but Jace’s gaze is locked on Simon’s.

“How many times are we going to go through this, Jace?” Simon asks quietly. He’s still, so still, his fingers clenched around his phone. “How many times do I have to prove myself to you?”

Jace takes a step forward without meaning to. “No,” he insists lowly, “no, you _know_ that’s not it, I worry about you – “

“You don’t worry about anyone else like _this_ ,” Simon snaps, and for whatever reason that sets off something small and cold and angry deep inside Jace, the ugly part of him he’s worked so hard to bury in the past. He _knows_ he treats Simon differently, knows with a sort of helpless resignation that he’s made himself vulnerable when it comes to Simon. He doesn’t like having it thrown back in his fucking face.

“I don’t _have_ to worry about anyone else like _this_ ,” Jace spits back, half-mocking, and Simon takes a step backwards. He’s not good at confrontation, Jace _knows_ this, and yet – and yet, Jace is still pushing at the things that hurt the most because he’s always been the best at that.

Simon’s voice is thick. “I am _never_ going to be enough for you,” he mumbles, his face crumpling.

Jace is selfish. Jace doesn’t ever deserve nice things. _You are never going to be enough for me like this_ , he realizes, because he will _always_ want more and he doesn’t know how to prevent that from bleeding over into everything that he has with Simon.

In the end, Jace doesn’t say anything, and Simon blurs out of focus as he runs away, and it’s just another thing that Jace has broken in his life.

.

Things get better, but they get worse sometimes too and Jace doesn’t quite know how to deal with that. Shadowhunters are meant to die young, he thinks blankly, and when they don’t – well, he’s only twenty-two, but he doesn’t know where to put all the guilt and anger and nightmares. There’s not enough of him for it to stay contained. He feels like he’s falling apart at the seams.

He goes to see Maryse because it’s _something_ to do, and they spend a morning making dozens and dozens of cupcakes for one of the charity foundations she’s working with. It’s soothing, and he lets her chatter about the children she’s interacted with wash over him as he methodically measures and mixes batter.

They’re in the middle of piping the pink-purple frosting in little rosettes along the edges of the cupcakes when Maryse says “Can I tell you a story?”

Jace grins. “Have you not been doing that this whole time?”

She laughs, a gentle sound that they all hear more and more often these days. Maryse is softer, kinder, even quicker than before to give her love and support. She’s the only mother Jace has ever known, and he knows now that it wasn’t always easy going with her, but now she’s everything he hopes to be, someday. If he lives long enough for that, if he doesn’t crawl out of his own skin before thirty.

“I meant an older story.” Maryse puts down her piping bag and folds her hands across the table, looking at him fondly. “Something from my days as a Shadowhunter.”

“Okay,” Jace agrees, bemused. He carefully begins piping another rosette.

“It’s about Celine,” Maryse says quietly, “back when we were all very young, before the uprising,” and Jace’s rosette smears into a mess. He freezes, and swallows past the lump in his throat.

“Oh,” he says, his voice cracking. People never really want to talk about Celine; he’s not even sure _he_ wants to talk about her most of the time.

“I was making a cup of coffee before a meeting about border security,” Maryse says. Jace puts down his cupcake and focuses on breathing in and out, staring at the flecks of glitter in the frosting. “She wandered in, looking fairly lost. I think – I know people say she always looked innocent and lost but I’m pretty sure she was _actually_ lost that day, but – oh, she was very beautiful, your mother.”

Jace nods, throat still tight. He’s seen pictures of her, the young girl that should have been his mother. She’s immortalized in some kind of youthful pain that makes him feel so very, very old. He can’t look at her picture for long without wanting to cry for no particular reason at all.

“Everyone knew she was beautiful, of course,” Maryse continues, “and everyone wanted to protect her a little, but – she was so lonely, you know? I just – when she walked in, looking at me like that, I didn’t know how I could leave without _doing_ something about that haunted look in her eyes.”

Jace finally looks up. Maryse’s attention is focused on her own hands, her thoughts somewhere far away.

“I made her a cup of tea, and we sat on the kitchen counter and talked about food.” Maryse laughs tiredly. She rubs a finger along the edge of a plate filled with cupcakes, thoughtful. “She was such a curious person, you know? I can guess, now, why she was the way she was, but – she was so genuinely intrigued by the world. She had her hands wrapped around this mug of tea, and she just inhaled, and then she said ‘Ah, I feel better already, and I haven’t even taken a sip.’ Honestly, my immediate response was _is this girl high_?”

Jace chokes out a laugh, squeezing his eyes shut. That’s such a _silly_ thing to say but he loves it, he thinks desperately, and he tucks that little piece of her into his heart. He wishes she could have said that to _him_.

“I told her that maybe after all, we really needed very little to be happy.” Maryse finally looks up at him, and her eyes are bright with tears, to his surprise. “I would give anything to go back and make myself listen to that. We don’t need much, so what we do get, we should hold on to.” She takes a deep, ragged breath. “Celine didn’t ask for much to make her happy, but she wasn’t even given that. We forget, I think, what she was really like; what she liked, what she disliked, what made her angry or what made her laugh. All we can really remember is how sad she was and how beautiful she was, and that’s – she was a real person, she _was_ , but in our memories she’s just a tragedy.”

He knows. He _knows_. He craves that description of her at the same time that he hates it. What does that say about him? “I don’t want her to be that,” he finally says, his voice embarrassingly small. “I want her to be real.”

Maryse swallows, and then reaches across the table to cup his cheek. “My wonderful boy. You have that same lost look sometimes. But she was bright, and curious, and willing to talk with arrogant, stubborn Maryse Lightwood about inconsequential things over a cup of tea just to smile a little. _That’s_ the kind of beauty she was. You have her sorrow, but you also have the spark of life she was chasing after for as long she was alive.”

“I don’t feel like I do,” Jace murmurs, his voice catching. “I’m older than her and I just – I can’t – I don’t.”

“You do,” Maryse smiles at him, kind and loving. “Even when you don’t think you have it – you do.”

.

A week after the raid on Tantalus goes off successfully, Jace finally works up the courage to knock on Simon’s door. He hesitates at first, his fist hovering over the worn blue paint, before he thinks of the way Simon’s eyes look when they’re bright with unshed tears, and he can’t do that, he can’t.

Simon opens the door, and Jace swallows hard. “I can’t watch you die,” he says, “and it’s not the same as everyone else because – because I’ve _seen_ you die and I’ve held your body and I can’t forget it. Not ever.”

Simon’s mouth parts in shock, his eyes soft and scared, and his eyes are bright again and _fuck_ , it hurts to be this vulnerable, something deep and intense in him that he’s not sure should be out in the world like this. But Simon _needs_ to hear this, needs to know that he’s enough for everyone. For anyone.

“You’ve been dead too,” Simon says quietly. “You’ve been _possessed_. I care, Jace. You’re not the only one that – “ he cuts himself off and runs a hand through his hair, looking away.

 _Please_ , Jace thinks impossibly _, say you feel the same_.

Simon looks back at him, tired and worn down. “I need you to trust me at your side.”

Jace shakes his head. “I don’t trust _myself_ ,” he says. “But – I was wrong. I shouldn’t have taken my fear out on you.”

Simon smiles wanly, stepping aside. “C’mon, you big softie. Apartment’s been weirdly quiet without you.”

Jace grins, moving in and shucking his jacket as he goes. He smells some kind of fall-scented candle, an amalgamation of pumpkin and cinnamon, and he turns to look at Simon.

“I _am_ sorry.”

Simon looks at him steadily. “I know.”

.

A week before Simon turns twenty-three – or what _would_ have been twenty-three if he wasn’t immortal – Jace overcorrects a jump while chasing a demon and ends up falling ten stories from the top of a building. He lies on the ground of the dirty alley, dimly wondering how Clary managed to call Simon at all when this happened to her a few years ago. He’s on fire, his back splintered and his body frozen in agony. He kind of wants to die, just a little.

Alec shows up eventually; the panic that Jace is pushing across their bond is enough to send him sprinting across the ground with his shirt only halfway buttoned. _You look like a very awkward stripper_ , Jace wants to say, but the words won’t come; he gasps as blood trickles out of his mouth.

“Stop trying to _move_ ,” Alec spits out, passing his stele over Jace’s iratze. “What the fuck happened to activating your runes with just your stupid glowing eyes?” Jace doesn’t answer; he’s losing his battle with consciousness at a rapid rate. As his eyes drift shut, he sees hovering faces, all drawn with tension – Magnus, with magic sparking at his fingertips; Izzy, with a thunderous look across her brows; and Simon, his mouth open in horror and his eyes shining wetly. He looks like he’s realizing something, his hand coming up to cover his mouth.

Jace thinks _I like his eyes_ , and then he loses consciousness.

He spends the rest of the week recuperating at Simon’s place. The combined healing power of Magnus and the Institute’s medics is enough to get him on his feet, but his body can’t seem to forget the impact. He aches, inside and out, and he feels like he’s being stitched back together in the wrong way.

“It’s normal,” Clary tells him sympathetically when she stops by. “It takes a while to get used to every part of yourself again. It should kill you, you know. The fall. But we’re made of hardier stuff than that.” He’s almost positive she’s talking about more than just his ungainly leap off the building, but she doesn’t push it and he’s glad because he doesn’t know what he’d say to that.  

He considers it later, when he’s curled up on Simon’s couch with a blanket tucked around him and his back propped up by an ungodly number of pillows. Some rom-com is running on the screen; he’s not paying a lot of attention. He’s thinking about dying, again.

It’s been a long time since the days when they were _really_ at war, but it’s not that easy to forget what it was like to be a prisoner in his own body. Drowning would have been kinder than what that ordeal did to him; he remembers screaming until his throat was raw, clawing at his own fingers until he’d ripped his own nails off. Nothing had stuck because nothing had really been real, and he’d been worse than a ghost; he’d been inconsequential and unrecognizable to himself, the most alienating and horrifying thing he’d ever experienced. He’d wanted someone to peel away everything that made him _Jace Herondale,_ the blonde hair and blue eyes and black runes, until he was nothing but ashes and dust. He’d wanted to be killed, wanted the Owl to take his body and soul completely just so that something, _anything_ , would come to an end.

That’s what he can’t bear the most, he thinks now, looking at his fingers in the faint light from the television. That harrying sense that he’s stretched thinly over something dark and monstrous; that none of this is real and one day the yawning void of the Angels will take him back– take back the life that, by all rights, belongs to them.

Simon enters then, startling Jace out of his reverie, opening the door and falling through in a whirlwind of keys and sheet music and – for whatever reason – several baseball caps.

“Hi Mopey,” Simon calls out, cackling as Jace scowls at him for the nickname. “What’s crackin’?”

“Don’t say that,” Jace replies, unimpressed. “Is this what you write into your songs? How are you making money?”

“My extremely good looks.” Simon moves as he talks, putting things away as he flutters around the living room. “How are you feeling?”

“Like death warmed over.”

“Well, at least it’s warm,” Simon says nonsensically as he flops down onto the couch by Jace’s feet. “We should try venturing out tomorrow, see if your elderly body is up to it.”

Jace kicks at him as best as he can when his feet are tangled in the blanket. “I’m in my prime, and you should respect your elders.”

Simon laughs, low and quiet, and then there’s silence for a while as they watch the tail end of the movie play out. Jace feels like he’s watching it all from very far away, like he’s stuck in the middle of the road while everyone else seems to be just a few steps ahead of him. He wonders if Simon ever feels like this, or if kindness and good advice is just ingrained into his genetic material. Probably the latter, Jace thinks.

“Hey, Simon,” Jace says before he can stop himself, “happy birthday, dude.” That’s the other thing that’s happening today, the thing none of them are supposed to talk about because it makes Simon’s face go pinched and lonely.

Simon looks away. “Thanks,” he says faintly. “Another year of not getting older.” 

Jace kicks at him again until Simon looks back, a wretched look on his face. “I _mean_ it, Simon; I’m glad you survived another year, despite the fact that you attract danger in the worst way possible.”

When the corners of Simon’s mouth lifts just a little, Jace feels like he’s being pulled back to earth, back to his own body. It’s as real as he’s ever felt.

.

They almost kiss in the winter. Powdery white snow lines the sidewalks of New York, and Jace refuses to use his already questionable driving skills until April after he spins out one too many times on the icy roads, so he and Simon end up walking to the holiday party that Magnus is throwing at Pandemonium.

Simon is, as usual, reveling in snow in the kind of way that normal humans never do. He’s all dimples and boyish charm as he shoves his hands deeper in a coat he doesn’t need to wear and beams at the way some of the trees in the park they’re walking by have string lights wrapped around their trunks.

Jace sighs and buries his nose deeper into his scarf, grinning to himself. Simon catches it and slaps at Jace’s arm.

“Are you laughing at me?” he asks, pouting. Simon is a grown man, and it shouldn’t be half as amusing as Jace finds it.

“Yeah.” Jace nudges Simon’s shoulder with his own. “Do you need to skip around a little? Maybe frolic? I won’t judge you if you need to frolic a little before we get to the party. I won’t even make fun of you for it.”

Simon kicks at a clump of snow as Jace laughs so that it hits Jace’s shin; Jace tries to duck out of the way, still laughing, but he doesn’t try hard enough and he’s hit by it anyway.

“Vampire skills strike again!” Simon crows, and Jace swears.

“You’re fucking on!” he yells over his shoulder as he makes for the cover of the trees. Simon splutters and follows him, stumbling over the little drifts of snow in the park. There’s just enough light from the lampposts that everything glitters just a little bit, and Jace can’t help it; Simon makes him feel stupidly giddy and he wants to hold on to the feeling for as long as he can.

He grabs a handful of snow and blindly throws it over his shoulder, putting just a little bit of supernatural effort into it, and laughs wildly as he hears Simon’s indignant shout. There’s a burst of sound, and Jace looks backward long enough to see Simon glance around before he blurs with speed. Jace’s eyes widen and he tries to sidestep, but it’s too late; Simon tackles him with a loud _ha_!

There’s a warm weight on Jace’s back as he’s thrown face-first into the snow, and he groans at the frigid shock of it. Simon’s draped over Jace, shaking with laughter as his arms come down on either side of Jace’s head, pinning him down in place.

“Yield,” Simon murmurs into Jace’s ear as Jace shifts his weight up onto his biceps, grunting against Simon’s added bulk. Jace closes his eyes and revels in it for just a second; Simon’s body fitted against his like a missing puzzle piece, curved around him like a shield, and Simon’s breath whispering across his ear. His heart does a little somersault in his chest; he _wants_ this, and sometimes –

He rolls them over, depositing Simon onto his back in the snow and then rolling back over Simon quickly, so that Simon’s caged underneath him. Jace looks down, his eyes tracing the lines on Simon’s face as Simon grins up at him.

“You still got some moves, I see,” Simon says then, his voice still low, but his eyes are crinkled up in the corner. “But I gotta say I think I win this one.”

Jace snorts, trying desperately to ignore the way their bodies are fitted together, the line of their hips barely brushing. “ _You’re_ under _me_.”

“I got you to frolic in the snow,” Simon says, and his smile softens, his dimples coming out in full force, and then – and then he wraps his fingers lightly around Jace’s wrist.

“ _Oh_ ,” Jace breathes out, but he doesn’t move, and Simon doesn’t either, and there’s something darker in Simon’s eyes now. Jace is warm all over, and he thinks that the snow has never looked prettier than when Simon Lewis lays in it, and he wants with everything he has in him, and he sways forward almost unconsciously –

A shrill ringing erupts into the silence between them and Simon startles so badly that he knocks Jace’s hand out from under him; Jace crashes down fully onto Simon, his nose uncomfortable squashed down against Simon’s collarbone. The next few seconds are a confusing mix of limbs as they both hastily spring apart and jump up, shaking snow off and patting down their hair. Jace feels a hot flush crawl up the back of his neck, and Simon’s bright red as he answers his phone.

“Hi Clary! Yeah, Jace and I are almost there, we’re _literally_ about to enter – “ he starts saying, lying outrageously and motioning at Jace to start walking. He grins ruefully, and Jace smiles back shakily. He’s dizzy with longing; he didn’t think it was humanly possible to want something as badly as he wants to kiss Simon right now.

.

In the first week of April it rains. Jace wakes up early in the morning when a light pattering noise pierces his dream; he sits up to see that his window is still open and there are little droplets of rain flying in.

Jace rolls out of bed wearily and stumbles over to close the window, but he pauses when he looks outside. New York is shining in the early morning rain, the clouds glowing with sunlight as they lash the streets with water.

The rain feels good on his bare skin, cold and bracing. His pajama pants are starting to get wet, but he’s not awake enough to care. Simon’s place is high enough above the building next to it that he can see out into the streets a block over, where a few cars are slowly driving by and some people are hurrying across the crosswalks.

Jace likes New York like this; quiet and a little morose, just like him, but hopefully – still real. Sill there, in all its shitty, shitty glory. He’s forgotten where his metaphor ends and he starts but it’s good enough for him, he thinks as he finally reaches out and draws the windows shut with a loud noise. He reaches inside himself for that hollowness that always sits there, cavernous and terrifying, and finds that he’s almost used to it.

 _Onwards and upwards_ , he thinks, which is what Simon tells him grandiosely when Jace loses to him at pool. It’s silly in all the ways that are important, and Simon’s voice in his head makes him feel  - not like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but like the tunnel isn’t so lonely.

Things get better. Things get worse sometimes, but Jace is learning how to hold out for the times that things get better.

.

When spring finally arrives, Alec begins to wear a spray of cherry blossoms in the pockets of his formal shirts. Jace idly wonders aloud if they’re from Japan, because he wouldn’t put it past Magnus to portal across the world every morning just to get fresh flowers for their apartment. Alec frowns in the way he does whenever Jace guesses something right that Alec wishes he wouldn’t guess.

“I’m trying to figure out something to get him in return,” Alec finally grumbles as they patrol along a street filled with upscale bars, “but it’s hard to top cherry blossoms _hand-delivered_ from Japan.”

Jace grins. “I guess squashed daisies that have been left out in the rain just don’t really live up to all that, huh?”

Alec glares, and Jace laughs even as Alec digs a painful elbow into Jace’s side. “That was _one time_ and that was _three years ago_ ; give me a break. What’s the last romantic thing _you_ did?”

“Uh.” Jace tries to choose his words carefully, but Alec cuts him a look and says, “Silently doing things for Simon and hoping he notices like a standoffish cat doesn’t count, Jace.”

Jace rolls his eyes. “Then I guess that’s all _my_ romantic moves out the window.” Alec grins, but doesn’t say anything. They keep walking, and Jace thinks about making other people smile. He wonders if it counts when it’s done silently, if Simon would like it better if he knew how Jace felt about him. If it would make Simon stand a little taller, even if he didn’t feel the same way about Jace, because he’d know how bright his light was through someone else’s eyes.

.

He wakes up when it’s still dark outside and for a moment the shadows look like the inside of his own mind, which he knows too intimately from being trapped in it to slowly watch his body be taken over by some loveless monster, and it’s not real it’s not real it’s not _real_ –

He is twenty-four but some part of him will always be alone and afraid and twenty; some part of him will always be dead. He is twenty-four and feels a cavernous void in him; this is death and this is his mother’s miserable legacy and he wants to know what it means to be real anyway.

.

“I think your emblems are all very eighteenth century,” Simon says primly. “Even if it _is_ pretty cute that Clary has knives with the Fairchild emblem on it. But that’s more because Clary’s cute than anything.”

“You know what’s eighteenth century? _Vampires_. And yet, here you are.” Jace mutters, elbowing him. Simon looks at him for a second, confused, before a gleeful look crosses his face.

“The eighteenth century - you’re talking about Dracula. Wow – I didn’t know – “

Jace turns and claps a hand over Simon’s mouth. “Finish that sentence,” Jace warns, “and I’ll replace your blood bags with ketchup.” Simon’s eyebrows slant downward and he glares, petulant, but he nods. Jace slowly takes his hand away, watching, and then –

“I didn’t know you could _read_!” Simon screeches after a second, and then he promptly doubles over, laughing at his own joke. Jace groans as people start to look at them.

“You’re an embarrassment,” he tells Simon, but Simon just straightens up and grins at him, unaffected. Jace shakes his head, smiling. “You can’t fool me, Lewis, I know you’re just wishing you had _your_ own emblem. You’re into that high fantasy stuff.”

Simon leans back against the wall, crossing his arms and regarding Jace with amusement still written all over his face. “Maybe I am. Still. I can’t believe how _archaic_ all of you are. It’s like real life LARPing to the extreme.”

“You’ve known us for almost five years. How are you _still_ surprised?”

Something soft and fond crosses Simon’s face at that, the corners of his lips turning up. “I’m always surprised by you.”

Jace doesn’t know what to make of that. “Simon,” he says, because he needs to say _something_. “I – Do you even _know_ what half the things you say sound like?”

Simon smiles patiently. “Do you?” he asks.

.

He wakes up one day and it’s almost September again, and he _aches_. He’s tired and hurt and all he really wants to do is sleep. He hates everything he touches. The world feels like it’s shifting around him and he can’t move fast enough to keep up. It’s miserable.

 _I’m sad_ , he thinks, and it’s like a punch to the gut. _I’m sad I’m sad I’m always sad_ –

Jace has been running away all his fucking life from everything that was trying to kill him, but this is body. He can’t run out of his own skin. These are his hands, his eyes, his lying tongue. He _needs_ to be able to stand in one place; he needs roots, somewhere where he can soak in the sunshine and be able to smile without nightmares of his teeth falling out.

 _I’m sad_ , he thinks, and then for the first time –

 _I don’t want to be sad_.

It’s a foreign thought in his head and he spends the day wallowing in bed, staring blankly at the wall and turning the words over and over in his mouth until they feel like incomprehensible noises. Simon checks in on him, used to it enough that he offers food and cookies and a quiet hand on his shoulder. At the last gesture, Jace reaches out and slowly grasps Simon’s wrist.

Simon looks at him, steady and so _real_. His hand is broad and anchoring where it’s spread against the fabric of Jace’s shirt. Jace wants to give him _everything_ , everything hopeful and good that he has left, but he’s beginning to think that it’s okay to keep something good for himself.

“What do the Mundanes do?” he croaks out. “When they – when they get like this?”

Simon purses his lips, and shifts to sit on the bed near Jace. He looks thoughtful.

“Ideally, they talk to a professional.” Simon looks askance at him. “It’s what I told Izzy to do, all those years ago. For the yin-fen.”

Jace nods. He doesn’t know how he feels about that, laying his life out for a stranger and expecting them to know what to say. He can’t even hear these words out loud; how can he give them a reality outside of his own head?

“You’re a soldier, Jace,” Simon says softly. “But that’s not a way of living. Anything that’s a home is not meant for a war.”

“We’re not at war.”

“We’re not. But aren’t you?” Simon asks. He opens his mouth again, and then hesitates for a second, looking like he’s weighing the worth of saying something, and then he looks down at Jace, still lying in bed, and he slowly squeezes Jace’s shoulder. “You live like you haven’t won. I – I don’t know how to explain it, but it sucks because I know you’re there, Jace. Underneath all of that – _stuff_ – in your head, you’re there. But I don’t think you know how to live with the stuff in your head, instead of against it. And I want you to know that you _can_. You’re here. You’re real. And you’re not going anywhere.”  

There’s a lump in Jace’s throat that feels impassable, and he thinks if he spoke now he’d split at the seams and be nothing but tears and hysteria. He wants Simon to keep talking forever, to tell him that he’s real and he’s _there_.

“I have a list,” Simon says. “Of people you can see, if you want. I’ll write it down for you.”

The list is stuck to the top of his nightstand, and it stays there for a while like a light in the dark that Jace isn’t sure he wants.

.

How do you stitch yourself together when parts of you are dead? How do you make a dead thing come back to life without irrevocably changing everything that made it alive in the first place?

He’s twenty-four. He’s a soldier in a war that doesn’t seem to be ending, a war that his side created. He can’t kill people with the same reckless grace that was drilled into him because these are _people_. Life is a fragile, fragile thing and he’s a bull in a china shop. He feels the runes across the slope of his stomach, and he wonders why Shadowhunters have to scar themselves for the sake of the angels. There’s a hardness to the planes of his body that he wishes would be softer to the touch. He stands by the mirror and skims a hand over the fine trail of hair leading down to sharp bones that disappear into the waistband of his jeans and thinks about what it would like if he just had a little more weight and heft there, if he didn’t look like he was cut from glass and marble and everything  painful and cold to the touch.

Was this what his mother felt? Did she look at herself and think, _I don’t belong in this skin? I’m an intruder in a world where everyone but me knows how to make a home?_ The Herondale ring sits against his chest, just a handspan away from his heart, and he is his father’s son, but he is his mother’s legacy. He _has_ to be.

There’s a list burning a hole on his nightstand that he shakily picks up one night. He picks a name at random and sends an email, short and perfunctory, and he sits back and presses a hand to his stomach again.

There has to be an end. There has to be.

.

He goes on patrol with Clary and sneaks glances at her for a while, wondering how she stays upright when she knows how kind the world can be and still needs to be a Shadowhunter at the end of the day. He’s not particularly subtle about it, and she finally looks back at him, an eyebrow raised. He shrugs, not willing to put it into words.

She laughs. “How _are_ you, Jace? I haven’t seen you in a while, just you. You’re always hanging out with Simon.”

Jace makes a face. “Yeah, but to be fair _you’re_ always hanging out with Simon too.”

“That’s different.” Clary tosses her hair over her shoulder. “He’s legally obligated to spend as much time as possible with me. That’s the best friend rule.”

“You’re twenty-two,” Jace says fervently, “and you still sound like you’re fourteen.”

“Fourteen was a good age.”

“Sure,” Jace says, laughing. “If you say so.”

There’s silence for a while again, and then Clary uses that uncanny ability of her and says to him, “Whatever emotional thing you want to ask me that you’re afraid to ask, _just ask it_.”

He doesn’t say anything at first, but she’s the first person that taught him how to be a human, instead of just a Shadowhunter. Some part of him will always respond to her like she’s healing his wounds, even when she’s not.

“Why are you here?” Jace asks quietly. “The threat of the Downworld is pretty much gone. We’ve fought all the big bad villains from your past. You could – you could have your normal life again.”

Clary’s face goes through a complicated series of expressions, and Jace feels like he’s put his foot in his mouth again.

“I mean – “ he tries to start again, but she holds a hand up to him and he falls silent, shoving his hands in his pockets and feeling small. He doesn’t want to keep saying unintentionally cruel things. He’s not twenty anymore, and he _cares_ , he cares so much it hurts.

“I know what you mean,” she says quietly, and she hunches her shoulders in. “Last year I almost went back to art school, you know.”

He looks at her in surprise, and then he tries to _really_ look at her. She’s bright, and cheerful, but there’s a faint weariness below her eyes and he wonders if he’s missed something important. “I…didn’t know.”

She hunches in on herself even more, like she’s trying to disappear. Jace knows that, intimately.

“I didn’t tell anyone but Maia. She told me that whatever made me happy was what I should do but…it’s not that easy, is it?”

She sounds so sad, so young and scared. Jace feels like shit, feels like he shouldn’t have asked, but she looks at him with nothing but a quiet, sad understanding.

“This is all I really have left of my mother,” she says. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t know how I would leave it.”  
“Do you want to leave it?” Jace asks slowly. She purses her lips and looks up at the sky.

“One day,” she says. “I don’t know how to stop fighting now that I’ve started, but I also want – I want things for my future, things with Maia and with my friends, things that don’t have anything to do with being a Shadowhunter. Not today, not yet, but…one day.”

.

Okay, he thinks, okay. I can do this.

He walks into an office with patterned carpet and meets the eyes of an old man with glasses that looks at him and smiles without an ounce of judgement, and Jace’s skin stretches and stretches and stretches and he is nothing but bones and blood and something dead, something terrible and nameless that stretches into the darkness with claws that tear into the little bit of heart he has left –

_who is he but the son of a murderer, the son of a traitor, the son of a dead girl walking_

_who is he to be a shape, a body, to store hollowness in his lungs when he should be six feet under and solid in the dirt, letting the worms crawl out of his eyes he is Jace with no last name son of Celine nothing but hands that kill and kill and he is not real he is not real he is not real he is –_

He is twenty-four, almost twenty-five, when he opens his mouth and admits that he thinks that he needs help.

.

It doesn’t get _easier_ , after the first session, but it becomes more normal. He’s in a daze for almost a month, stunned at his own audacity in going to a _Mundane_ therapist and laying out all his problems with heavy war allusions, when he runs into Simon – literally – when he’s leaving Dr. Pomatter’s office.

“Oh,” Simon says brightly as Jace steadies him, and then Simon does a double take and says “ _Oh_?” with so much meaning inflected into that one word that Jace rolls his eyes.

“Yes,” Jace says gruffly. “I am here. I’m leaving, actually.”

“Oh,” Simons says stupidly, and then he’s just standing in the hallways and grinning at Jace like an idiot, like the most alluring idiot Jace has ever laid eyes on. His heart clenches into something painful inside his chest.

“Are you going to say _anything_ else but oh?” Jace demands. Simon rocks backwards on his heels, exuding bright-eyed happiness and approval.

“I don’t know,” Simons says, unconcerned with Jace’s surly attitude. “Am I allowed to say anything else? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Jace rolls his eyes again. “I’ve heard all sorts of strange things from you. Discussing my clearly evident problems is not going to be the most uncomfortable thing I’ve heard from your mouth.”

“I resent that.”

“You should.” Jace smirks. Simon shakes his head, and his smile softens into something fonder and more serious.

“I’m happy for you,” Simon tells him, and there are sunflowers blooming in Jace’s chest.

“I’m happy for _you_ ,” he says back nonsensically, but he gives Simon a tentative smile and he knows this is going to be enough to fuel him for at least a month in moving forward. It’s a baby step. But it’s important, and it’s going to matter, and he’s okay with making it to at least the next month.

.

Being asked to regularly talk about and categorize his life makes him realize things that have blended into the background of his life in an almost comically embarrassing way. He wonders if it’s too late to fix these things, these four years of life he feels like he’s missed, and then he remembers all that positive crap he’s supposed to reinforce in himself and tries to tell himself that he hasn’t missed things, it’s just that this is – life, in every way. The past is gone, but he’s still here, _now_ , and he can do something proactive.

So he takes his sister out bowling and begins to actually get to know Charlie. He takes Max to paintball and badgers him into signing up for a youth basketball league so that he has friends outside of the Institute. He starts spending more time with Maryse, helping with her business.

Sometimes he just buys a coffee and sits in Central Park, staring at the ground and quietly absorbing the way people move around him. He makes himself a playlist for those times and fills it with music that makes him just a little sad, because he’s getting better but part of getting better is accepting for himself that he’s not happy right now. That there are things that make him want to cry.

.

“It’s good to see you looking a little livelier,” Izzy tells him one morning before they grab their weapons. “You were getting kind of quiet.”

Jace makes a face at her. “Don’t be fooled. It’s because in my head, I was composing a very long ode to myself.” She snorts at that, and then elbows him, _hard_. He glares at her, and she laughs unrepentantly.

“Look, if that’s what you gotta do so you can sleep at night, I’m not going to judge you. Really though,” she glances at him appraisingly. “You seem like you’re getting more sleep.”

Jace shrugs. “Something like that.” There’s a lull in the conversation as they move through the Institute, and then he asks her. “Do you think you’ll ever do anything other than this?”

She doesn’t seem as surprised by this question as he expected her to be. Instead, she cocks her head and thinks. “I’ve thought about it,” she murmurs, “but in the end, I honestly don’t think anything else is for me.”

“Really?”

She shrugs as they reach the armory. She slows as she walks, until she’s standing in the middle and looking around at all the weapons, most of them modified by her. Her eyes are distant, like she’s cataloguing everything she’s done here, all of herself that she’s left in everything they use at the New York Institute.

“I like the fighting,” Izzy says quietly. Jace feels an immeasurable fondness as he stares at his sister, resilient and standing proud. “It quiets the thinking in my head. It makes me feel alive. And when I can’t fight anymore, then I’ll still find a way to make this a part of my life.”

“You’re too smart for your own good,” Jace guesses.

She snorts, turning to finally look at him. “Something like that.” She says, rubbing her thumb across a freshly healing rune on her forearm. “Everything just moves so fast in my head, like I can’t stop making connections and seeing patterns, and – when it’s just my whip in my hand, the world slows down around me, and it’s all clear. I’m _good_ at this, all of it, and as terrible as it sounds, that makes me feel good about myself.” She looks miserable and young when she says it, like she’s just admitted to something horrifying.

“I didn’t know you felt like that,” Jace says slowly. In retrospect it makes sense, the way Izzy knows so much and always pushes herself beyond everyone else. There’s a fear of failing that’s deep-seated in Izzy, that no amount of praise seems to drive away. “I didn’t know you…you always seemed to have it so together, but…”

The things they were handed as children were so heavy, Jace thinks bitterly. None of them have quite grown out of the things that made them fourteen and afraid. Not Alec, not Izzy, and not him. He wonders if Max will grow up better and thinks that he might not; that this might just be the Shadowhunter way.

Izzy laughs, bitterly, but her eyes are kind as she considers Jace. “Not many people do know. I try not to talk about it too much, because it sort of hurts to think about. But Charlie’s been helping with that, you know, and he likes me with all my weird hang-ups about weapons and stuff, so. It’s getting better, you know?”

“Charlie? Your _weapons_ and Charlie?”

“Oh, come on.” She laughs, happy and alight. “He’s the man of my dreams. Of course he knows about our world. We just pretend really well.”

Jace considers this, nodding absently. “So, it’s all worth it, when you find someone that makes you happy.”

Izzy gives him a knowing look. “It always is. Jace – I’ve found my place in my own life. But I didn’t do that until I realized it was okay to live for myself instead of living for everyone else.”

Jace scoffs. “What, you think I’m not – “

She cuts him off, uncanny in her firm kindness and her constant ability to understand him, perceptive as always. “I think you’re scared of taking the things you want because you’re still stuck on what your parents made you into. You are not them. That’s not what anyone of us see when we look at you.”

Jace isn’t sure she’s right, but he’s also not sure that she’s wrong. Somewhere in the middle of that statement, he thinks, is who he is.

.

Dr. Pomatter tells him he needs to have more fun.

“I have fun!” Jace says, outraged. “I have friends, I hang out with people – man, you really think I’m some kind of loser – “

“How often do _you_ , Jace, make expressly specific plans to meet up with people just so you can do something entertaining? To communicate your appreciation of those relationships?”

Jace opens his mouth. “Just last – “

“Drinks or meals don’t count, and events organized by _other people_ don’t count.”

Jace shuts his mouth and glares rebelliously at the old man, though Pomatter never takes any of his shit and keeps smiling at him kindly. He keeps coming back to Pomatter because when the old man smiles, he feels like it’s genuine, and that’s something he’s learning he doesn’t see enough of in people he sees as authority figures.

So it’s dad problems, still, and he’s probably drawn to Pomatter because Jace will forever be searching for father figures in his life, but the old doctor’s made it clear to him that these kind of things are okay to have as long as they don’t take over his life. Jace is working on it. Like everything in his life, he’s working on it.

He’s never really realized how much work life is.

So he begrudgingly texts his friends and sets up a game night at Simon’s place – his and Simon’s place? The details are a little unclear – and takes on the responsibility of food and drinks and making sure everyone’s having a good time. No problem, he thinks, everyone coming is a friend and he knows them, he’s got this.

He absolutely does _not_. An hour into the game night sees him frantically spinning in circles in Simon’s walled off kitchen, wondering what he’s going to do now that there’s no more salsa and the beer Maia likes is running out because Bat keeps drinking it too and it sounds kind of like Charlie and Magnus are coming close to blows over the rules of Uno. This couldn’t have been worse if he _tried_ to fuck it up, he thinks miserably.

“I think the last time I saw you this focused was during the _war_ ,” Simon says dryly as he suddenly appears, setting a mug down on the cluttered countertop. “You hanging in there, champ?”

Jace turns to fully look at him, and Simon sighs as he fully takes in Jace’s expression. “Oh, Jace.”

“I think I don’t know how to have fun,” Jace says bluntly. “I am a boring, bitter man and my friends only keep me around for the occasional narcissistic comment.”

Simon shakes his head, half-smiling, and leans against the fridge. “While that sentence displayed a shocking amount of self-reflection, it was completely in the wrong direction. That’s not true at all, and you know it. You’re just _stressed_ over _mundane_ things because you’ve never encountered a normal situation that required your attention like this.”

“What?”

“Jace,” Simon’s fully laughing now, pushing off the fridge and putting a hand on Simon’s shoulder, “ _relax_. We’re all having fun because we’re all here, together. Forget about the food, we’re adults and we can eat chips dry. This isn’t a fancy dinner party. It’s a game night between friends, and said friends are missing you!”

Jace presses his lips together, feeling half-good from Simon’s words and half-bad from the lingering thought that he still doesn’t know how to do things like a normal young adult.

Simon squeezes Jace’s shoulder and says “C’mon, you have final arbitration power for Uno since you’re the host. Everyone’s waiting for you.” He pauses, looking at Jace so happily that Jace can’t breathe for a second, can’t swallow past the lightness in Simon’s eyes. They’re _both_ looking better, Jace thinks, even Simon these days.

“Everyone’s waiting?” Jace asks, casting around for something to say as he smiles crookedly at Simon. Simon’s smile grows softer, his eyes bright as he searches Jace’s face.

“We are. I am,” Simon says. His voice is soft. “I always am, Jace.”

Jace’s breath catches, and he brings his own hand up as if he’s in a trance, his fingertips brushing the skin of Simon’s cheek, and Simon’s eyes are half-closed as he stares, waiting, and –

A loud crash sounds, and Clary skids into the kitchen, yelling at Jace to hurry up. The moment breaks, and Simon springs away from him. Jace exhales hard.

He’s only been in love with Simon for two, almost three years, but it feels like a part of his heart’s always been reserved for the other man. It used to feel like drowning, like falling, but now – Jace likes the way love feels every time he looks at Simon, bright and new and everything wonderful in the world.

This is what time does, Jace realizes. It lets the light in, slowly and softly.

.

“Do you think I’d make a good father?” Alec asks him one day, seemingly out of nowhere. Jace looks up from where he’s been stuffing his face with kebabs and squints a little.

“Is this a trick question?” he asks after he hastily swallows his food. Alec looks away, fiddles with a pen on his desk. “I _knew_ that when you said you’d got me lunch it was a trick into some awkward conversation about feelings.”

“You’re one to talk,” Alec grumbles. He clicks and unclicks his pen and Jace makes a face.

“Don’t tell me you’re _pregnant_ , Alec.”

“You’re such a child.” Alec throws the pen at him, and Jace catches it, setting it down on the desk and staring carefully at Alec. He’s still not meeting Jace’s gaze, looking everywhere else. His eyebrow is twitching, which is a weirdly clear indicator of agitation for Alec.

“Right,” Jace says, “so what is it?”

“Well, I just – well, _do_ you think I’d be a good father?”

Jace stares him down. “Look at me, Alec.”

Alec slowly lifts his chin, his jaw clenched, and he says quietly, “I’ve been thinking about kids a lot, but I don’t want to get Magnus’ hopes up. And I’m not sure if I’m really the right kind of person to be a father. I mean – I can’t – I _know_ Magnus wants that more than anything and he would be wonderful at it but I don’t want to bring my own baggage to a kid. Magnus has centuries of this, I…I just have me.”

Jace nods slowly. “This isn’t a conversation you can have with me,” he says, firmly. “I want to be very clear on that. You need to talk to Magnus.” Alec winces.

“I know, but – “

“ _But_ ,” Jace continues, cutting over him, “you’re going to be a great dad. Times are changing, and we aren’t our parents.”

Alec looks at him. “Tell me honestly. Do you think I’d be good?”

“I think you would try,” Jace says, “and I think you would love your kid and support them no matter what, and I think that’s one of the biggest things. So yeah, I think you’d be good.”

His brother nods, slowly, trying to resist the smile that’s overtaking his face. Jace grins and starts shoveling food into his mouth again.

“I think I just needed to hear someone say that,” Alec mutters. “That we’re not our parents.” Jace shrugs. It’s a learned thing, he thinks, and he is learning that he’s going to make all sorts of mistakes – but none of them will be his parents’, and they will be all his own.

.

Accountability, he thinks as he stands in front of his mother’s grave, and then – vulnerability too, maybe. Ingredients to patch over the parts of himself he doesn’t quite like.

“There’s always a way to live around yourself,” he says quietly, putting a bouquet of bright flowers at the foot of the jagged inscription. The dirt under his knees is damp with the morning fog, and he swallows as he thinks of what his mother might have looked like.

Except – he can’t really picture her. All he knows is an image of a girl with a halo-like mess of blonde hair, too young to have a kid and too young for anything at all. She did feel the same way as him, he thinks, paper-thin emotions scattered across her eyes for everyone and anyone to take and use against her. It doesn’t feel good to know that maybe that’s the thing he inherited from her, but that’s all he gets.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her grave, and it will never be enough for the family they never had – a mother, a father, and him, bright and wholly different than the man he is now. It will never be enough for the past, but he’s going to make damn sure that it’s enough for the future.

.

He’s twenty-five when he buys two tickets to an early showing of the latest in a seemingly never-ending series of superhero movies and puts them on the table in front of Simon, who’s just stuffed his mouth full of gummy bears that his vampire body can barely digest, and says “Do you want to go on a date with me?” It isn’t the hardest thing he’s ever done, but it’s close, and his heart feels like it might split the world in two with how loudly it’s pounding.

Simon swallows what must have been a mass of highly inedible human food, gasps for breath, and asks “ _Really_?” with a stunned expression on his face, unmistakably hopeful with how the corners of his lips turn up. Jace’s chest burns with quiet satisfaction.

“Really,” he says evenly. He looks away for a second, because Simon’s answering grin is so blinding that Jace feels like doing something stupid, like bursting into giddy laughter. His eyes land on the fridge, where Simon’s put up the Shadowhunter patrol schedule with Jace’s name circled everywhere it appears and “BRING TAKEOUT” scribbled under it, and he adds, for good measure, “I’m in love with you.”

Simon’s laugh is the sweetest sound in the world as he stands, raking a hand through his hair.

“You’re the most dramatic man in the world,” he says, crossing the space between them and reaching hesitantly for Jace.

“I’ve been in love with you for years now,” Jace replies seriously, not rising to the bait but smiling despite himself. He takes Simon’s hand in his own and tugs until Simon stumbles forward, steadying himself with trembling fingers clutched in the front of Jace’s shirt. “Are you going to say anything or keep looking at me like…like that?”

Simon’s smile fades, and he cups Jace’s cheek with his hand. His eyebrows are furrowed as he studies Jace, and Jace holds his breath.

“I love you,” Simon says, and his voice catches and breaks. “I – I always have, I think.”

 _Oh_ , Jace thinks, and he says it, out loud, _oh_ and it sound quiet and desolate and achingly like defeat, because – “Simon,” Jace says helplessly, breathing the words out into the tiny space between them, and then he doesn’t know _what_ to say to encompass the overwhelming sense that this is the brightest thing that’s happened in his life but it doesn’t matter because he and Simon are meeting in the middle, on their own grounds, and the universe is shifting around his skin and resettling and finally, finally fitting him into the life he wants.

.

 


End file.
